The onslaught of assholes

The infamous Batman beatdown on the Strip; more George Knapp on the recent hubbub over costumed assholes and panhandlers staging a Strip takeover:

Las Vegas is so classy, exhibit A:

The onslaught of assholes

CITYLIFE (LAS VEGAS, NV)--"I knew it was getting out of hand when I saw the guy dressed up in a penis costume," the Metro cop told me. "And he was working with another costumed performer who was dressed up as a vagina. They were working in tandem right there on the pavement in front of Bally's."

The presence of a 6-foot tall, walking, talking penis on a public sidewalk would hardly surprise anyone who has been on the Strip recently. The influx of costumed characters is now a full-blown phenomenon (no penis pun intended) and the nightly roll call includes portly Batmen, gay Supermen, postmenopausal Wonder Women, assorted dueling Elvii, space aliens, showgirls of every age and shape, and creatures worthy of a Tim Burton nightmare.

Of all the distractions on the Strip these days, the costumed folks are among the least egregious. Tourists seem to enjoy taking snapshots with them, but we are rapidly approaching the saturation point. Metro officers say they see a lot of costume-on-costume violence, as caped crusaders tussle with pirates of the Caribbean for prime spots on the sidewalk. I am not making this up. There have been other, more serious concerns, too, such as characters posing for photos with families, even though the people in the costumes have long rap sheets as sexual predators.

The characters are but one of the highly visible manifestations of an infection that is spreading along the Strip. On any given night, and to a lesser extent during the day, the sidewalks are packed with escort-service handbillers, pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, gang members, pickpockets, illegal vendors, panhandlers, hustlers and random thugs. And everywhere, it seems, there are drunks. Not just happy drunks, amiably taking in the sights, but completely blotto drunks, falling-down drunks, loud, boisterous, asshole drunks who hurl insults, get into fistfights, run out into traffic, hurl their guts onto the sidewalk, pass out and act like complete jerks.

Las Vegas has always been a place to party. What's different these days is the degree of drunkenness and the sheer, multifaceted array of jerkwads, nincompoops, ruffians and shady operators. One of my TV colleagues captured video of an illegal sidewalk gambling operation the other day. Police say they have caught vendors selling beer out of coolers. I would not be surprised to see enterprising strippers bring their own poles onto the sidewalk, or hookers set up portable cribs.

HOW DID IT GET THIS WAY?

I think there is a temptation to blame some of this transformation on the ad campaign that has helped to keep our town afloat. The "What happens here" ads were a smashing success. The slogan is now so ingrained in American culture that you don't need to finish the punch line. The brilliant spots have certainly reminded the world that our town has long been a sanctuary for those in search of a good time, a city of temptations and fantasies.

The ads have never urged people to drive as fast as they can to get here, or to drink as much as they can once they arrive. But somehow, as the "What happens" message has seeped into the national consciousness, it has morphed into different meanings for different people. Personally, I suspect the principal catalyst for the onslaught of numbskullery is a movie.

THE HANGOVER EFFECT

Maybe it seems unfair to blame the wave of obnoxiousness on a mere movie, and a comedy at that, but if you ask the beleaguered officers who are trying to keep a grip on the Strip, they will tell you that The Hangover is now an everyday part of their work. A friend of mine, Sgt. Mike Ford, says he and his colleagues hear it every night, the ramblings of besotted idiots who somehow think the cops in Las Vegas are going to be just as cool and understanding as the cops in The Hangover.

For many visitors, anything short of a Hangover-type experience will be a disappointment. So they start pounding booze during the trip to town, and they drink more when they arrive, and they continue drinking until they pass out or end up in jail. Fighting, obnoxiousness and vandalism are just part of the territory. Add to that the locals who hang out on the Strip to see what pops up, and you have a recipe for trouble.

"We're not going to arrest our way out of this," former sheriff Bill Young told me. He's right. We can't possibly assign a cop to every visitor. But arrests are certainly part of the solution. The problem is, there is no place to put the people who get arrested, no prosecutors available to go after any but the most serious criminals. As Young says, unless you make it hurt, unless you disrupt people causing trouble on the Strip by taking them out of action for awhile, they will keep coming back.

Sheriff Doug Gillespie gets it. He was way ahead of the curve when he created a new squad last fall to deal with the influx of buttheads on the Strip. But the wave of troublemakers has grown faster than the police can keep up. It might take a long-term commitment -- comparable to what New York police did in Times Square in the '90s -- to get it and keep it under control.

Our elected officials have invited this trouble. They didn't do it on purpose, of course, but they have repeatedly approved projects and policies that have magnified these problems. They said it is OK for casinos to build bars right out onto the sidewalks, where the properties sell oversized novelty drinks that help to make visitors comatose. The crowded scenes approved by local officials not only contribute to rowdy behavior, but are downright ugly.

Increased law enforcement is going to be part of the solution, but there are larger and more complicated issues that must be challenged if our town is going to reclaim some of the class that it has clearly lost. More on that in the weeks ahead.

Date:  07/21/2011